WO 01/59972 A2 describes a method for the maintenance of components. By means of the method it is determined that a certain component has to be maintained. A maintenance process with at least one maintenance order is automatically selected, in order to perform this maintenance. The maintenance process is administered and monitored on a maintenance server.
From EP 0 822 473 A2, a system for the maintenance of dispersed industrial installations is known. In this case, the industrial installations in dispersed factories are monitored by host computers. Each of these host computers is connected via the Internet to a management host computer at the supplier end. The host computer at the customer end transmits fault messages from the industrial installations to the supplier. The host computer at the supplier end then provides information on possible countermeasures to the host computer at the customer end.
WO 00/62138 describes a method and a system for the performance of maintenance of a production installation, particularly in the paper industry. In this case, information on the production process is provided to a remote service unit, where this information is collected and analyzed. The transmission between the production installation and the service unit takes place via the Internet, with the particular internal data networks being separated from the Internet itself by firewalls.
From U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,701 B1, a maintenance system is known whereby data is transmitted from intelligent field devices to a local maintenance management system. The collected data is transmitted via the Internet to a global maintenance server.